The Cleveland Community Police Commission voted last week to tell city police to pause the use of automated license plate reader cameras on Jan. 1 and not resume until the commission updates its policy with community input.
The resolution, presented by Commissioner Shandra Moriera-Benito at last week’s meeting, calls for “a thorough review process in collaboration and consultation with community stakeholders, subject matter experts, [Cleveland Division of Police] and City Council.” That process will begin within 30 days of the Sept. 23 meeting, according to the resolution. It also calls for the commission to review any new or renewed contracts the city has with providers of the technology.
The city did not respond to Signal Cleveland’s question about whether it believes the commission has power to issue such a moratorium on license plate readers.
Moriera-Benito told Signal Cleveland that authority comes from the city charter, which establishes the commission as the “final authority over police policies, procedures, and training regimens.” But the city charter doesn’t limit it to that method, she said.
Commissioner, Michael Nelson, a retired municipal judge, abstained from the vote. He told Signal Cleveland that he believes that resolution is non-binding, meaning it doesn’t have legal force. “We don’t have oversight over the city’s contracting process,” Nelson said.
License plate readers are cameras that capture images of every passing vehicle. Those images are transmitted via cellular networks to a database and stored for 30 days. Law enforcement agencies can share access to their databases with each other.
The 100 or so cameras that Cleveland police currently use are made by Flock Safety. Dozens of cities have ended or declined to renew contracts with Flock amid widespread criticism for immigration-related searches and various reported abuses of the technology. Benito cited questions about millions of searches of Cleveland’s data by other law enforcement and a vendor mistake that allowed immigration related searches among the reasons that she proposed the pause.
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The resolution also applies to cameras in patrol cars that can read license plates that are not made by Flock.
Over the summer, Cleveland City Council initially rejected the Public Safety Department’s request to renew the Flock contract for another year, but then relented and extended it for six months (over the objections of an opposition group called Flock NO Cleveland). Council also required the department to seek proposals from other providers and restrict data sharing.
Moriera-Benito said that council’s demands, and the city’s promises to comply, were important steps. “But I believe that the community wasn’t sufficiently at the table during this process to share their real concerns about the risk of directing city resources to the system,” she said at the meeting. Her resolution also calls for the commission to review any legislation for new contracts for the technology.
Chief: Cleveland police have not misused license plate readers
Police Chief Dorothy Todd challenged the claim about community input in an email to commissioners after the meeting, pointing to City Council’s hearings.
Todd also said that incidents of misuse of Flock systems in other cities, like those described by Moriera-Benito at the meeting, “should not be presented as evidence” of wrongdoing in Cleveland. The city “is not aware of any instance in which a CDP officer illegally used Flock technology,” she wrote.
Todd expressed support for “clear, consistent consequences for intentional misuse of law enforcement technology” and “continued review” of Cleveland’s policy. She did not ask the commission to reconsider the January moratorium.
Commissioner James Chura, a retired Cleveland police commander, said at the meeting that “there should be some consequences” for any misuse of license plate readers by officers. But he said that the technology “prevents a lot of people from committing crimes, and it solves a lot of crimes.” He and Commissioner Sheila Mason, a retired suburban police chief, voted against the resolution.
Nelson’s recommendation was to hold off on passing the resolution until the commission made an effort to hear from a wide array of residents, including crime victims of crime whose assailants were identified using the technology — and then to discuss that safeguards should be put in place on the technology.
The commission approved a license plate reader policy in October 2025. At last week’s meeting, Commissioner Piet van Lier said that, in hindsight, some of its provisions, such as who can access the data, “are not sufficient from my perspective.” Van Lier, who voted in favor, said the resolution wasn’t a ban on the technology but it set a timeline of three months to work with the city on updating the policy.
Bryn Adams, a spokesperson for Flock NO Cleveland, said the group is “heartened” by the commission’s resolution and hopes the process for input that it set “will allow for a more robust conversation regarding the risks and costs associated with” license plate readers.
Council Member Mike Polensek, chair of council’s Safety Committee, told Signal Cleveland that the resolution is another example of the commission being “anti-police” and that he would talk soon to Public Safety Director Wayne Drummond about how he plans to respond.
